The All So Inclusive NFL

Harrison Butker, a kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, is being criticized by many on social media for making a very Catholic speech at a very Catholic college. Butker himself is, you might guess, very Catholic. He's so Catholic in fact that the very inclusive National Football League doesn't want to have anything to do with him. The League issued a statement to assure the world that Butker's beliefs weren't their beliefs.

You know, there was an easy, considerate way around this, NFL. Just don't say anything. What is there, really, to say? A Catholic is out there spouting Catholic beliefs. There's no shock value there. Let his words hang in the air without comment.

But you couldn't do that. You had to make sure the world knew you were so tolerant and inclusive that his words required intolerance and exclusivity. The League probably doesn't appreciate the irony of the oxymoron.

I do. My new team is the Kansas City Chiefs. I hope they win every game on a Harrison Butker field goal.

Religious Liberty Under Attack

A teacher, fired from a Catholic school in Cincinnati, has been awarded $171,000 for wrongful termination. She was fired for having a child out of wedlock via artificial insemination, which is a violation of Church doctrine. An actively lesbian teacher has been fired from a Columbus school because her lifestyle violates Catholic teaching as well. There's no word on any potential lawsuit, but there has been significant public outcry.

Why ought there be shock and anger at such things? Anyone who knows anything about Catholicism surely knows they violate Catholic doctrine. It's hard to believe that the principles involved themselves did not realize it when they hired into their respective schools. Yet the one sues anyway, and the other is 'heartened' by the support she has received.

But more than that. The cases represent exactly what's wrong with America today regarding religious rights. The lawsuit is particularly galling: while religious groups cannot prevent free speech as demonstrated through the petition supporting the Columbus physical education teacher, the legal action has resulted in a clear violation of the First Amendment. Religious institutions certainly have the moral right to inculcate their doctrine within their own institutions, especially educational ones. On a practical level, there is simply no point in having a religious institution if not to promulgate that religion.

This must mean that authorities and employees within the religious institutions must reflect the beliefs of that religion. When they do not, they forfeit their right to work within that institution.

Rights of conscience are not merely individual. They are also institutional. The Supreme Court has recognized this with regard to political contributions and political speech. The nation needs to recognize as much with regard to religious liberty.

It does not matter what the secular world may think about the given religion. What matters, if the secular world is really intent on being true to its own espoused values about rights, is that religious rights be respected even should it disagree with the particulars involved.

That won't happen. Why? Because the secular religion rising within these United States is as unilateral, arbitrary, and authoritarian as it has often accused any Church in the world to have been. The difference is that secularists are led by nothing but raw power. That power will eventually be the death of all human rights.

Sacrifice religious rights if you must. Just remember that the powers that be will soon enough come for your pound of flesh as well.

Learning from Fr. Williams Mistakes

No one is perfect. But it seems that some people are held to higher standards when it comes to their behavior.

As they should, quite honestly. When you speak for an institution which calls us, as it says right in Scripture, to 'be perfect', then you ought to expect to be held to a higher standard. That is why it is always disappointing to have a case such as that of Catholic priest and Michigan native Fr. Thomas Williams. He was a leader in the Legion of Christ, a conservative Catholic group itself rocked by other scandals, and a teacher at the organization's school in Rome. He has stepped down from the group and is taking a year off from instruction in light of the admission that he fathered a child several years back.

The atheists and anti-Catholics will have a field day with it. Boiled down to the basic criticism, they will say with snickers and knowing grins, 'So they're no different than the rest of us, those Catholics and other holier than thous'. You can't really blame them. Such scandals are made to order for the skeptics and doubters.

They still fail to see the big picture nonetheless. Conservatives and Catholics, indeed any of the seriously religious, if they take their faith rightly (no pun intended) know they are flawed. They know they are human and will fail to live up the expectations of their faith. Sometimes those failures are spectacular and in the full view of the public. They may even be more wrong precisely because those people speak for institutions or creeds which rightly condemns the actions they have done. Yet such does not and cannot condemn the institution or creed. Fr. Williams, if he was any decent kind of priest at all, would never have taught that he was perfect, but only that the teachings of his Church were perfect and true.

And that is precisely what is neglected by the naysayers who have and will roundly criticize the Church, conservatives, and their friends and allies, not only in this but in other scandals as well. They condemn traditions and institutions due to human weakness. Yet we are called, again, to be perfect. That means we must always strive for that. Yet neither should we expect it. Preaching to that calling yet failing to live up to it ourselves cannot deny the call. It can only mean that we're human. Nothing more.

We will fail to always and everywhere do the right thing, even those of us not seriously religious. Yet that does not grant license to go ahead and do the wrong thing either. When we err, whether in small things or large, all we can do is start again to try to get things right the next time. We do that because we are (or at least ought to be) trying to be perfect. We're trying to do the right thing, to get it right the next time. After all, the next time is all we've got. And one day, maybe, we'll get just a bit closer to the perfection to which we're called. And even closer the time after that.

That is the essence of Catholic and conservative morals. Aim the highest and work towards it. And never take your eyes from the prize even as you fail. You'll be better of for it in the end.